Disk drives using various kinds of disks, such as optical disks, magneto-optical disks, flexible magnetic-recording disks and, as this list is not exhaustive, other types of disks, are known in the art. In particular, hard-disk drives (HDDs) are widely used as computer storage devices and are indispensable storage devices for contemporary computer systems. Moreover, HDDs have found widespread application to video recording and reproducing equipment, car navigation systems, cellular phones, and similar devices, in addition to computers, because of their outstanding information storage capabilities.
In the process of writing data to and reading data from a magnetic-recording disk, a head-slider flies over a spinning magnetic-recording disk. Deposition of debris onto a head-slider's air bearing surface (ABS) may cause data loss such as a write error or a read error. These errors seem to be caused, in part, by increased fly-height of the head-slider because of the debris deposit on the ABS, or alternatively, a change in the fly-height because of contact between the head-slider and the magnetic-recording disk resulting from the debris deposit. Thus, development engineers and scientists engaged in the design of the HDDs are interested in controlling, or eliminating, the accumulation of debris deposits on head-sliders used in HDDs.